SSR Themed Furniture Piece

I thought this might be fun to share with my fellow Marvel movie prop aficionados.

My father gave me this heavily-worn wooden chest. It was a little smaller than other footlockers I’ve seen and not big enough to use for any kind of meaningful storage in the house. At first I thought I might re-finish and repaint it in a modern SHIELD deco to use it as a cool transport for my Cap TWS costume pieces.

But the color, wear, and tear made it look too much like a WW2 footlocker. Since it will probably be decades before I can finish my Smithsonian Cap, I moved away from the notion of costume storage into the realm of creating a piece of “prop furniture” for the house. The idea was to make the piece look like something that has been knocking around an SSR warehouse for the last 70 years.

Keeping it simple (and thanks to my friend Terry Sorge who created the vinyl SSR logo negative for me in less than a day), I painted the SSR logo onto the footlocker as is – leaving the original paint and wear in place.

I painted the logo on and added legs to box, mounting it backwards so the lid would open out. I drilled some holes for cords as well.

Now I have an SSR themed entertainment center for under $30.

I think it is a good start. I still need to weather the logo (my mistake, I sprayed the paint on too thick) and stain the legs to make this version more complete. Right now the inside of the box is only being used to hide cords and the surge protector. Later, I will add a shelf at the base and then a shelf on the inside as well so I can house my still working VCR inside the locker with the rest of the hidden cords.

Finally, once I can find the right stencil, I plan on adding “SSR ITEM # 084” to the side. Because a working VCR might as well be an alien artifact these days. :cool